Hightower not finished battling old foe Perry

Updated 10:20 pm, Sunday, November 6, 2011

The former (thanks to Perry) agriculture commissioner proved it again last week, using his folksy-verging-on-bawdy rhetoric to rally protesters against a tax exemption sought by energy companies.

Contending that Valero Energy Corp. thinks common folks are fire hydrants to its big-dog status, Hightower punctuated his thought with a quote that didn't make my story given the necessity for dashes: “I think what they're about to learn is that there's more power in a fire hydrant than there is in a pissing dog.”

The spotlight on Perry's presidential run has given fresh attention to Hightower, a writer and speaker who pushes populist causes. He freely shares his opinion of Perry, who as a relatively unknown lawmaker pulled off an upset of the Democrat in 1990.

If Hightower's not at a rally, he's on the Rachel Maddow show, telling viewers that Perry “put the goober in gubernatorial” and quipping, “You could go out here to where I am in Austin, Texas, to any restaurant or cafe or bar and say to a waitress, ‘Did you know Rick Perry's created a million jobs in Texas?' And she'll say, ‘Yes, I know, I have three of them.'”

“When Rick Perry says ‘I can do for America what I've done for Texas' pay attention. That's no idle threat.”

If he's not writing about what he calls a corporate takeover of the 2012 elections, he's noting a Perry ad in the 1990 ag commissioner race highlighting Hightower's endorsement of Jesse Jackson — an ad that came under fresh scrutiny for racial overtones due to Perry's presidential run.

Not everyone appreciates Hightower's humor or his record.

Valero spokesman Bill Day, defending the proposed tax break as fair, contended Hightower was inaccurate in a column about it. A line from Day's email to Hightower captured the column's flavor: “‘Big Oil,' ‘avaricious' and ‘honchos' are of course pejorative terms ...” And one Democrat said privately that Hightower's among those who hurt party fortunes by playing to the marginalized rather than the middle class.

But admirers like Tom “Smitty” Smith of Public Citizen, whose board includes Hightower, said he makes a positive difference: “When people are looking at ways to get people stirred up and believing they can do stuff, they call on Hightower to speak,” he said.

Hightower's 1990 loss to Perry was the start of the Republican's rise in state politics. At the time, the incumbent didn't seem to take Perry seriously. He raised little money, ran no TV ads and found himself out of a job after a bruising campaign. Perry's adviser then was Karl Rove, and his backers included agriculture interests who disliked Hightower's emphasis on reducing pesticide exposure. But Smith said not too much should be made of that race: “Perry had enough star power that if he didn't win the ag commissioner race, he would have won some other statewide race and would have ascended one way or another. He's both good-looking and just articulate enough for most Texans.”

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The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles board, which previously tied on offering license plates sporting the Confederate battle flag, will consider the idea again Thursday. Perry, who named the board, has said he is against the plates. But state Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Perry backer, is still pushing them. Asked if they could stir road rage, Patterson said the issue “stirs emotions. That doesn't mean it stirs violence. We've got nine other states that have this plate. Are we saying that Texans are uniquely lacking in self-control? I don't think so.”

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Perry has taken a liking to Democrats' lines. First came his bit about a proposed border fence doing little more than spurring the sale of ladders, used by Democrats including his 2006 challenger Chris Bell.

Now he's quipping about putting an alligator-filled moat on the border, a notion that The Hill noted drew Perry's scorn when uttered by President Barack Obama. Perry even suggested that Obama appeared “interested in trying out for Saturday Night Live.”

So was Perry auditioning for SNL when he told Sean Hannity, “I think the idea of saying, ‘Listen, I'm going to build a double fence, we're going to put alligators between it, and we're going to put lava in there, as well' — I mean, you know, one tries to outdo the other one.”